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HE DESTINY OF - 

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SIR JOHN LUBBOCK A^ 






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HENRY ALTEMUS 






COPYRIGHTED 1896 

by HENRY ALTEMUS 



Henry Altemus, Manufacturer 
philadelphia 



THE DESTINY OF MAN. 



" For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are 
not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be 
revealed in us." — Romans viii. 18. 



THE DESTINY OF MAN. 



THOUGH we have thus a sure and certain 
hope of progress for the race, still, as far as 
man is individually concerned, with advancing 
years we gradually care less and less for many 
things which gave us the greatest pleasure in youth. 
On the other hand, if our time has been well used, 
if we have warmed both hands wisely " before the 
fire of life,' ' we may gain even more than we lose. 
If our strength becomes less, we feel also the less 
necessity for exertion. Hope is gradually replaced 
by memory : and whether this adds to our happi- 
ness or not depends on what our life has been. 

There are of course some lives which diminish 
in value as old age advances, in which one pleas- 
ure fades after another, and even those which re- 
main gradually lose their zest; but there are 
others which gain in richness and peace all, and 
more, than that of which time robs them. 

The pleasures of youth may excel in keenness 
and in zest, but they have at the best a tinge of 
anxiety and unrest ; they cannot have the fulness 
and depth which may accompany the consolations 

(5) 



6 THE DESTINY OF MAN. 

of age, and are amongst the richest rewards of an 
unselfish life. 

For as with the close of the day, so with that of 
life ;< there may be clouds, and yet if the horizon 
is clear, the evening may be beautiful. 

Old age has a rich store of memories. Life is 
full of 

" Joys too exquisite to last, 
And yet more exquisite when past" 

Swedenborg imagines that in heaven the angels 
are advancing continually to the spring-time of 
their youth, so that those who have lived longest 
are really the youngest ; and have we not all had 
friends who seem to fulfil this idea? who are in 
reality — that is in mind — as fresh as a child : of 
whom it may be said with more truth than of 
Cleopatra that 

" Age cannot wither nor custom stale 
Their infinite variety. " 

" When I consider old age, " says Cicero, "I 
find four causes why it is thought miserable : one, 
that it calls us away from the transaction of affairs; 
the second, that it renders the body more feeble \ 
the third, that it deprives us of almost all pleas- 
ures ; the fourth, that it is not very far from 
death. Of these causes let us see, if you please, 
how great and how reasonable each of them is. " 



THE DESTINY OF MAN. 7 

To be released from the absorbing affairs of life, 
to feel that one has earned a claim to leisure and 
repose, is surely in itself no evil. 

To the second complaint against old age, I have 
already referred in speaking of Health. 

The third is that it has no passions. " O noble 
privilege of age ! if indeed it takes from us that 
which is in youth our greatest defect. " But the 
higher feelings of our nature are not necessarily 
weakened; or rather, they may become all the 
brighter, being purified from the grosser elements 
of our lower nature. 

Then, indeed, it might be said that "Man is 
the sun of the world ; more than the real sun. 
The fire of his wonderful heart is the only light 
and heat worth gauge or measure." 

" Single, " says Manu, " is each man born 'into 
the world ; single he dies; single he receives the 
rewards of his good deeds; and single the punish- 
ment of his sins. When he dies his body lies like 
a fallen tree upon the earth, but his virtue accom- 
panies his soul. Wherefore let Man harvest and 
garner virtue, that so he may have an insep- 
arable companion in that gloom which all must 
pass through, and which it is so hard to traverse." 

Is it not extraordinary that many men will de- 
liberately take a road which they know is, to say 
the least, not that of happiness ? That they prefer 
to make others miserable, rather than themselves 
happy ? 



8 THE DESTINY OF MAN. 

Plato, in the Phaedrus, explains this by describ- 
ing Man as a Composite Being, having three na- 
tures, and compares him to a pair of winged 
horses and a charioteer. " Of the two horses one 
is noble and of noble origin, the other ignoble and 
of ignoble origin ; and the driving, as might be 
expected, is no easy matter." The noble steed 
endeavors to raise the chariot, but the ignoble one 
struggles to drag it down. 

"Man," says Shelley, "is an instrument over 
which a series of external and internal impressions 
are driven, like the alternations of an ever-changing 
wind over an ^Eolian lyre, which move it by their 
motion to ever-changing melody." 

Cicero mentions the approach of death as the 
fourth drawback of old age. To many minds 
the shadow of the end is ever present, like the 
coffin in the Egyptian feast, and overclouds all 
the sunshine of life. But ought we so to regard 
death ? 

Shelley's beautiful lines, 

" Life, like a Dome of many-colored glass, 
Stains the white radiance of Eternity, 
Until death tramples it to fragments," 

eontain, as it seems to me at least, a double error. 
Life need not stain the white radiance of eternity; 
nor does death necessarily trample it to frag- 
ments. 

Man has, says Coleridge, 



THE DESTINY OF MAN. 9 

" Three treasures, — love and light 
And calm thoughts, regular as infants' breath ; 
And three firm friends, more sure than day and night, 
Himself, his Maker, and the Angel Death." 

Death is " the end of all, the remedy of many, 
the wish of divers men, deserving better of no 
men than of those to whom she came before she 
was called." 

It is often assumed that the journey to 

" The undiscovered country from whose bourne 
No traveler returns " 

must be one of pain and suffering. But this is not 
so. Death is often peaceful and almost painless. 

Bede during his last illness was translating St. 
John's Gospel into Anglo-Saxon, and the morning 
of his death his secretary, observing his weakness, 
said, ' 'There remains now only one chapter, and 
it seems difficult to you to speak. " "It is easy," 
said Bede; "take your pen and write as fast as 
you can. M At the close of the chapter the scribe 
said, "It is finished," to which he replied, " Thou 
hast said the truth, consummatum est, " He then 
divided his little property among the brethren, 
having done which he asked to be placed opposite 
to the place where he usually prayed, said "Glory 
be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy 
Ghost," and as he pronounced the last words he 
expired. 



10 THE DESTINY OF MAN. 

Goethe died without any apparent suffering, 
having just prepared himself to write, and ex- 
pressed his delight at the return of spring. 

We are told of Mozart's death that "the unfin- 
ished requiem lay upon the bed, and his last ef- 
forts were to imitate some peculiar instrumental 
effects, as he breathed out his life in the arms of 
his wife and their friend Siissmaier." 

Plato died in the act of writing ) Lucan while 
reciting part of his book on the war of Pharsajus ; 
Blake died singing ; Wagner in sleep with his 
head on his wife's shoulder. Many have passed 
away in their sleep. Various high medical au- 
thorities have expressed their surprise that the 
dying seldom feel either dismay or regret. And 
even those who perish by violence, as for instance 
in battle, feel, it is probable, but little suffering. 

But what of the future? There may be said to 
be now two principal views. There are some who 
believe indeed in the immortality of the soul, but 
not of the individual soul : that our life is con- 
tinued in that of our children would seem indeed 
to be the natural deduction from the simile of St. 
Paul, as that of the grain of wheat is carried on 
in the plant of the following year. 

So long indeed as happiness exists it is selfish to 
dwell too much on our own share in it. Admit 
that the soul is immortal, but that in the future 
state of existence there is a break in the contin- 
uity of memory, that one does not remember the 
present life, and from this point of view is not the 



THE DESTINY OF MAN. 11 

importance of identity involved in that of contin- 
uous memory ? But however this may be accord- 
ing to the general view, the soul, though detached 
from the body, will retain its conscious identity, 
and will awake from death, as it does from sleep; 
so that if we cannot affirm that 

" Millions of spiritual creatures walk the Earth, 
Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep, " 

at any rate they exist somewhere else in space, and 
we are indeed looking at them when we gaze at 
the stars, though to our eyes they are as yet invis- 
ible. 

In neither case, however, can death be regarded 
as an evil. To wish that youth and strength were 
unaffected by time might be a different matter. 

" But if we are not destined to be immortal, 
yet it is a desirable thing for a man to expire at 
his fit time. For, as nature prescribes a boundary 
to all other things, so does she also to life. Now 
old age is the consummation of life, just as of a 
play : from the fatigue of which we ought to es- 
cape, especially when satiety is super-added." 

From this point of view, then, we need 

" Weep not for death, 

'Tis but a fever stilled, 
A pain suppressed, — a fear at re6t, 

A solemn hope fulfilled. 
The moonshine on the slumbering deep 
Is scarcely calmer. Wherefore weep? 



12 THE DESTINY OF MAN. 

" Weep not for death ! 

The fount of tears is sealed, 
Who knows how bright the inward light 

To those closed eyes revealed ? 
Who knows what holy love may fill 
The heart that seems so cold and still." 

Many a weary soul will have recurred with com- 
fort to the thought that 

" A few more years shall roll, 
A few more seasons come, 
And we shall be with those that rest 
Asleep within the tomb. 

" A few more struggles here, 
A few more partings o'er, 
A few more toils, a few more tears, 
And we shall weep no more." 

By no one has this, however, been more grandly 
expressed than by Shelley. 

" Peace, peace ! he is not dead, he doth not sleep J 

He hath awakened from the dream of life. 
'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep 

With phantoms an unprofitable strife, 
He has outsoared the shadows of our night. 

Envy and calumny, and hate and pain, 
And that unrest which men miscall delight, 

Can touch him riot and torture not again. 

From the contagion of the world's slow stain 
He is secure, and now can never mourn 

A heart grown cold, a head grown gray, in vain — " 

Most men, however, decline to believe that 



THE DESTINY OF MAN. 13 

" We are such stuff 
As dreams are made of, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep." 

According to the more general view death frees 
the soul from the encumbrance of the spirit, and 
summons us to the seat of judgment. In fact, 

" There is no Death ! What seems so is transition ; 
This life of mortal breath 
Is but a suburb of the life elysian, 
Whose portal we call Death." 

We have bodies, "we are spirits." " I am a 
soul," said Epictetus, " dragging about a corpse." 
The body is the mere perishable form of the im- 
mortal essence. Plato concluded that if the ways 
of God are to be justified, there must be a future 
life. 

To the aged in either case death is a release. 
The Bible dwells most forcibly on the blessing of 
peace. "My peace I give unto you: not as 
the world giveth, give I unto you." Heaven 
is described as a place where the wicked cease 
from troubling, and the weary are at rest. 

But I suppose every one must have asked him- 
self in what can the pleasures of heaven consist. 

" For all we know 
! Of what the blessed do above 
Is that they sing, and that they love." 



14 THE DESTINY OF MAN. 

It would indeed accord with few men's ideal 
that there should be any " struggle for existence '* 
in heaven. We should then be little better off 
than we are now. This world is very beautiful, if 
we could only enjoy it in peace. And yet mere 
passive existence — mere vegetation — would in it- 
self offer few attractions. It would indeed be 
almost intolerable. 

Again, the anxiety of change seems inconsistent 
with perfect happiness ; and yet a wearisome, in- 
terminable monotony, the same thing over and 
over again forever and ever without relief or 
variety, suggests dulness rather than bliss. 

I feel that to me, said Greg, " God has promised 
not the heaven of the ascetic temper, or the dog- 
matic theologian, or of the subtle mystic, or of 
the stern martyr ready alike to inflict and bear; 
but a heaven of purified and permanent affections 
— of a book of knowledge with eternal leaves, and 
unbounded capacities to read it — of those we love 
ever round us, never misconceiving us, or being 
harassed by us — of glorious work to do, and ade- 
quate faculties to do it — a world of solved prob- 
lems, as well as of realized ideals/ ' 

" For still the doubt came back, — Can God provide 
For the large heart of man what shall not pall, 
Nor through eternal ages' endless tide 
On tired spirits fall ? 
1 «« These make him say, — If God has so arrayed 
1 A fading world that quickly passes by, 
Such rich provision of delight has made 
For every human eye,' 



THE DESTINY OF MAK. 15 

' What shall the eyes that wait for him survey 
When his own presence gloriously appears 
In worlds that were not founded for a day, 
But for eternal years ? " 

Here science seems to suggest a possible answer : 
the solution of problems which have puzzled us - 
here ; the acquisition of new ideas ; the unrolling 
the history of the past ; the world of animals and 
plants ; the secrets of space ; the wonders of the 
stars and of the regions beyond the stars. To be- 
come acquainted with all the beautiful and inter- 
esting spots of our own world would indeed be 
something to look forward to, and our world is but 
one of many millions. I sometimes wonder as I 
look away to the stars at night whether it will ever 
be my privilege as a disembodied spirit to visit and 
explore them. When we had made the great tour 
fresh interests would have arisen, and we might 
well begin again. 

Here there is an infinity of interest without anx- 
iety. So that at last the only doubt may be 

" Lest an eternity should not suffice 

To take the measure and the breadth and height 
Of what there is reserved in Paradise 
Its ever-new delight." 

Cicero surely did not exaggerate when he said, 
" O glorious day ! when I shall depart to that di- 
vine company and assemblage of spirits, and quit 



16 THE DESTINY OF MAN. 

this troubled and polluted scene. For I shall go 
not only to those great men of whom I have spoken 
before, but also to my son Cato, than whom never 
was better man born, nor more distinguished for 
pious affection ; whose body was burned by me, 
whereas, on the contrary, it was fitting that mine 
should be burned by him. But his soul not de- 
serting me, but oft looking back, no doubt de- 
parted to these regions whither it saw that I my- 
self was destined to come. Which, though a dis- 
tress to me, I seemed patiently to endure : not that 
1 bore it with indifference, but I comforted myself 
with the recollection that the separation and dis- 
tance between us would not continue long. For 
these reasons, O Scipio (since you said that you 
with Laelius were accustomed to wonder at this), 
old age is tolerable to me, and not only not irksome, 
but even delightful. And if I am wrong in this, 
that I believe the souls of men to be immortal, I 
willingly delude myself : nor do I desire that this 
mistake, in which I take pleasure, should be wrested 
from me as long as I live; but if I, when dead, 
shall have no consciousness, as some narrow-minded 
philosophers imagine, I do not fear lest dead 
philosophers should ridicule this my delusion.' ' 

Nor can I omit the striking passage in the 
Apology ', when pleading before the people of 
Athens, Socrates says, "Let us reflect in another 
way, and we shall see that there is great reason to 
hope that death is a good ; for one of two things 
—either death is a state of nothingness and utter 



THE DESTINY OF MAN, 17 

unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change 
and migration of the soul from this world to an- 
other. Now if you suppose that there is no con- 
sciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who 
is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death 
will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were 
to select the night in which his sleep was undis- 
turbed even by dreams, and were to compare with 
this the other days and nights of his life, and then 
were to tell us how many days and nights he had 
passed in the course of his life better and more 
pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I 
will not say a private man, but even the great king 
will not find many such days or nights, when com* 
pared with the others. Now, if death is like this, 
I say that to die is gain ; for eternity is then only 
a single night. But if death is the journey to an- 
other place, and there, as men say, all the dead 
are, what good, O my friends and judges, can be 
greater than this? 

"If, indeed, when the pilgrim arrives in the 
world below, he is delivered from the professors 
of justice in this world, and finds the true judges, 
who are said to give judgment there, — Minos, and 
Rhadamanthus, and ^Eacus, and Triptolemus, and 
other sons of God who were righteous in their 
own life, — that pilgrimage will be worth making. 
What would not a man give if he might converse 
with Orpheus, and Musaeus, and Hesiod, and 
Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again 
and again. I myself, too, shall have a wonderful 



18 THE DESTINY OF MAN. 

interest in there meeting and conversing with Pal- 
amedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and other 
heroes of old, who have suffered death through an 
unjust judgment ; and there will be no small pleas- 
ure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings 
with theirs. Above all, I shall then be able to 
continue my search into true and false knowledge ; 
as in this world, so also in that ; and I shall find 
out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and 
is not. What would not a man give, O judges, 
to be able to examine the leader of the great Tro- 
jan expedition ; or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or num- 
berless others, men and women too ! What infi- 
nite delight would there be in conversing with 
them and asking them questions. In another 
world they do not put a man to death for asking 
questions; assuredly not. For besides being hap- 
pier in that world than in this, they will be im- 
mortal, if what is said be true. 

"Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about 
death, and know of a certainty that no evil can 
happen to a good man, either in life or after death. 
He and his are not neglected by the gods ; nor 
has my own approaching end happened by mere 
chance. But I see clearly that to die and be re- 
leased was better for me ; and therefore the oracle 
gave no sign. For which reason, also, I am not 
angry with my condemners, or with my accusers ; 
they have done me no harm, although they did 
not mean to do me any good ; and for this I may 
gently blame them. The hour of departure has 



THE DESTINY OF MAN. 19 

arrived, and we go our ways — I to die and you to 
live. Which is better God only knows. M 

In the Wisdom of Solomon we are promised 
that— 

" The souls of the righteous are in the hand of 
God, and there shall no torment touch them. 

" In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die ; 
and their departure is taken for misery. 

" And their going from us to be utter destruc- 
tion ; but they are in peace. 

" For though they be punished in the sight of 
men, yet is their hope full of immortality. 

" And having been a little chastised, they shall 
be greatly rewarded : for God proved them, and 
found them worthy for himself.' ' 

And assuredly, if in the hour of death the con- 
science is at peace, the mind need not be troubled. 
The future is full of doubt, indeed, but fuller still 
of hope. 

If we are entering upon a rest after the struggles 
of life, 

" Where the wicked cease from troubling, 
And the weary are at rest, " 

that to many a weary soul will be a welcome 
bourne, and even then we may say, 

" O Death ! where is thy sting ? 
O Grave ! where is thy victory ? " 

On the other hand, if we are entering on a new 



20 THE DESTINY OF MAN. 

sphere of existence, where we may look forward to 
meet not only those of whom we have heard so 
often, those whose works we have read and ad- 
mired, and to whom we owe so much, but those 
also whom we have loved and lost ; when we shall 
leave behind us the bonds of the flesh and the lim- 
itations of our earthly existence ; when we shall 
join the Angels, and Archangels, and all the com- 
pany of Heaven, — then, indeed, we may cherish 
a sure and certain hope that the interests and pleas- 
ures of this world are as nothing compared to 
those of the life that awaits us in our Eternal 
Home. 



THE HOPE OF PROGRESS. 



" To what then may we not look forward, when a spirit 
of scientific inquiry shall have spread through those vast 
regions in which the progress of civilization, its sure pre- 
cursor, is actually commenced and in active progress ? And 
what may we not expect from the exertions of powerful 
minds called into action under circumstances totally differ- 
ent from any which have yet existed in the world, and over 
an extent of territory far surpassing that which has hitherto 
produced the whole harvest of human intellect." 

Herschel. 



THE HOPE OF PROGRESS. 



THERE are two lines, if not more, in which we 
may look forward with hope to progress in 
the future. In the first place, increased knowledge 
of nature, of the properties of matter, and of the 
phenomena which surround us, may afford to our 
children advantages far greater even than those 
which we ourselves enjoy. Secondly, the exten- 
sion and improvement of education, the increasing 
influence of Science and Art, of Poetry and Music, 
of Literature and Religion, — of all the powers 
which are tending to good, will, we may reason- 
ably hope, raise man and make him more master 
of himself, more able to appreciate and enjoy his 
advantages, and to realize the truth of the Italian 
proverb, that wherever light is, there is joy. 

One consideration which has greatly tended to 
retard progress has been the floating idea that there 
was some sort of ingratitude, and even impiety, in 
attempting to improve on what Divine Providence 
had arranged for us. Thus Prometheus was said 
to have incurred the wrath of Jove for bestowing 
on mortals the use of fire; and other improvements 

(23) 



24 THE HOPE OF PROGRESS. 

only escaped similar punishment when the ingenuity 
of priests attributed them to the special favor of 
some particular deity. This feeling has not even 
yet quite died out. Even I can remember the 
time when many excellent persons had a scruple or 
prejudice against the use of chloroform, because 
they fancied that pain w r as ordained under certain 
circumstances. 

We are tol-d that in early Saxon days Edwin, 
King of Northumbria, called his nobles and his 
priests around him, to discuss whether a certain 
missionary should be heard or not. The king was 
doubtful. At last there rose an old chief, and 
said: — "You know, O King, how, on a winter 
evening, when you are sitting at supper in your 
hall, with your company around you, when the 
night is dark and dreary, when the rain and the 
snow rage outside, when the hall inside is lighted 
and warm with a blazing fire, sometimes it hap- 
pens that a sparrow flies into the bright hall out of 
the dark night, flies through the hall and then flies 
out at the other end into the dark night again. 
We see him for a few moments, but we know not 
whence he came nor whither he goes in the black- 
ness of the storm outside. So is the life of man. 
It appears for a short space in the warmth and 
brightness of this life, but what came before this 
life, or what is to follow this life, we know not. 
If, therefore, these new teachers can enlighten us 
as to the darkness that went before, and the dark- 



THE HOPE OF PROGRESS. 25 

ness that is to come after, let us hear what they 
have to teach us." 

It is often said, however, that great and unex- 
pected as recent discoveries have been, there are 
certain ultimate problems which must ever remain 
unsolved. For my part, I would prefer to abstain 
from laying down any such limitations. When 
Park asked the Arabs what became of the sun at 
night, and whether the sun was always the same, 
or new each day, they replied that such a question 
was foolish, being entirely beyond the reach of 
human investigation. 

M. Comte, in his Cours de Philosophie Posi- 
tive, as recently as 1842, laid it down as an axiom 
regarding the heavenly bodies, " We may hope to 
determine their forms, distances, magnitude, and 
movements, but we shall never by any means be 
able to study their chemical composition or min- 
eralogical structure. " Yet within a few years this 
supposed impossibility has been actually accom- 
plished, showing how unsafe it is to limit the pos- 
sibilities of science. 

It is, indeed, as true now as in the time of New- 
ton, that the great ocean of truth lies undiscovered 
before us. I often wish that some President of the 
Royal Society, or of the British Association, would 
take for the theme of his annual address " The 
things we do not know." Who can say on the 
verge of what discoveries we are perhaps even now 
standing ! It is extraordinary how slight a margin 



26 THE HOPE OF PROGRESS. 

may stand for years between Man and some im- 
portant improvement. Take the case of the elec- 
tric light, for instance. It had been known for 
years that if a carbon rod be placed in an ex- 
hausted glass receiver, and a current of electricity 
be passed through it the carbon glowed with an 
intense light, but on the other hand it became so 
hot that the glass burst. The light, therefore, was 
useless, because the lamp burst as soon as it was 
lighted. Edison hit on the idea that if you made 
the carbon filament fine enough, you would get rid 
of the heat and yet have abundance of light. Edi- 
son's right to his patent has been contested on this 
very ground. It has been said that the mere in- 
troduction of so small a difference as the replace- 
ment of a thin rod by a fine filament was so slight 
an item that it could not be patented. The im- 
provements by Swan, Lane Fox, and others, 
though so important as a whole, have been made 
step by step. 

Or take again the discovery of anaesthetics. At 
the beginning of the century Sir Humphrey dis- 
covered laughing gas, as it was then called. He 
found that it produced complete insensibility to 
pain and yet did not injure health. A tooth was 
actually taken out under its influence, and of 
course without suffering. These facts were known 
to our chemists, they were explained to the stu- 
dents in our great hospitals, and yet for half a cen- 
tury the obvious application occurred to no one. 
Operations continued to be performed as before, 



THE HOPE OF PROGRESS. 27 

patients suffered the same horrible tortures, and yet 
the beneficent element was in our hands, its divine 
properties were known, but it never occurred to 
any one to make use of it. 

I may give one more illustration. Printing is 
generally said to have been discovered in the fif- 
teenth century ; and so it was for all practical pur- 
poses. But in fact printing was known long before. 
The Romans used stamps ; on the monuments of 
Assyrian kings the name of the reigning monarch 
may be found duly printed. What then is 
the difference? One little, but all-important step. 
The real inventor of printing was the man into 
whose mind flashed the fruitful idea of having sep- 
arate stamps for each letter, instead of for separate 
words. How slight seems the difference, and yet 
for 3000 years the thought occurred to no one. 
Who can tell what other discoveries, as simple and 
yet as far-reaching, lie at this very moment under 
our very eyes ! 

Archimedes said that if you would give him 
room to stand on, he would move the earth. One 
truth leads to another ; each discovery renders 
possible another, and, what is more, a higher. 

We are but beginning to realize the marvelous 
range and complexity of Nature. I have elsewhere 
called attention to this with special reference to the 
problematical organs of sense possessed by many 
animals. 

There is every reason to hope that future studies 



28 THE HOPE OF PROGRESS. 

will throw much light on these interesting struc* 
tures. We may, no doubt, expect much from the 
improvement in our microscopes, the use of new 
re-agents, and of mechanical appliances ; but the 
ultimate at&ms of which matter is composed are so 
infinitesimally minute, that it is difficult to foresee 
any manner in which we may hope for a final solu- 
tion of these problems. 

Loschmidt, who has since been confirmed by 
Stoney and Sir W. Thomson, calculates that each 
of the ultimate atoms of matter is at most Tirufannnr 
of an inch in diameter. Under these circum- 
stances we cannot, it would seem, hope at present 
for any great increase of our knowledge of atoms by 
improvements in the microscope. With our pres- 
ent instruments we can perceive lines ruled on 
glass which are toW of an inch apart ; but owing 
to the properties of light itself, it would appear 
that we cannot hope to be able to perceive objects 
which are much less than ToioTrxr of an inch in 
diameter. Our microscopes may, no doubt, be 
improved, but the limitation lies not in the imper- 
fection of our optical appliances, but in the na- 
ture of light itself. 

It has been calculated that a particle of albumen 
s-uiws of an inch in diameter contains no less than 
125,000,000 of molecules. In a simpler com- 
pound the number would be much greater; in 
water, for instance, no less than 8,000,000,000. 
Even then, if we could construct microscopes far 
more powerful than any which we now possess, 



THE HOPE OF PKOGKESS. 29 

they could not enable us to obtain by direct vision 
any idea of the ultimate organization of matter. 
The smallest sphere of organic matter which 
could be clearly defined with our most powerful 
microscopes may be, in reality, very complex; 
may be built up of many millions of molecules, 
and it follows that there may be an almost infinite 
number of structural characters in crganic tissues 
which we can at present foresee no mode of exam- 
ining. 

Again, it has been shown that animals hear 
sounds which are beyond the range of our hearing, 
and I have proved they can perceive the ultra-vio- 
let rays, which are invisible to our eyes. 

Now, as every ray of homogeneous light which 
we can perceive at all, appears to us as a distinct 
color, it becomes probable that these ultra-violet 
rays must make themselves apparent to animals as 
a distinct and separate color (of which we can 
form no idea), but as different from the rest as red 
is from yellow, or green from violet. The ques- 
tion also arises whether white light to these crea- 
tures would differ from our white light in contain- 
ing this additional color. 

These considerations cannot but raise the reflec- 
tion how different the world may — I was going to 
say must — appear to other animals from what it 
does to us. Sound is the sensation produced on 
us when the vibrations of the air strike on the 



30 THE HOPE OF PROGRESS. 

drum of our ear. When they are few, the sound 
is deep ; as they increase in number, it becomes 
shriller and shriller ; but when they reach 40,000 
in a second, they cease to be audible. Light is 
the effect produced on us when waves of light 
strike on the eye. When 400 millions of millions 
of vibrations of ether strike the retina in a second, 
they produce red, and as the number increases the 
color passes into orange, then yellow, green, blue, 
and violet. But between 40,000 vibrations in a 
second and 400 millions of millions we have no 
organ of sense capable of receiving the impres- 
sion. Yet between these limits any number of 
sensations may exist. We have five senses, and 
sometimes fancy that no others are possible. But 
it is obvious that we cannot measure the infinite by 
our own narrow limitations. 

Moreover, looking at the question from the other 
side, we find in animals complex organs of sense, 
richly supplied with nerves, but the function cf 
which we are as yet powerless to explain. There 
may be fifty other senses as different from ours as 
sound is from sight ; and even within the bound- 
aries of our own senses there may be endless 
sounds which we cannot hear, and colors, as dif- 
ferent as red from green, of which we have no 
conception. These and a thousand other questions 
remain for solution. The familiar world which 
surrounds us may be a totally different place to 
other animals. To them it may be full of music 
-which we cannot hear, of color which we cannot 



THE HOPE OF PROGRESS. 31 

see, of sensations which we cannot conceive. To 
place stuffed birds and beasts in glass cases, to ar- 
range insects in cabinets, and dried plants in 
drawers, is merely the drudgery and preliminary 
of* study ; to watch their habits, to understand 
their relations to one another, to study their in- 
stincts and intelligence, to ascertain their adapta- 
tions and their relations to the forces of Nature, to 
realize what the world appears to them ; these con- 
stitute, as it seems to me at least, the true interest 
of natural history, and may even give us the clue 
to senses and perceptions of which at present we 
have no conception. 

From this point of view the possibilities of pro- 
gress seem to me to be almost unlimited. 

So far again as the actual condition of man is 
concerned, the fact that there has been some ad- 
vance cannot, I think, be questioned. 

In the Middle Ages, for instance, culture and 
refinement scarcely existed beyond the limits of 
courts, and by no means always there. The life 
in English, French, and German castles was rough 
and almost barbarous. Mr. Galton has expressed 
the opinion, which I am not prepared to question, 
that the population of Athens, taken as a whole, 
was as superior to us as we are to Australian sav- 
ages. But even if that be so, our civilization, 
such as it is, is more diffused, so that unquestion- 
ably the general European level is much higher. 

Much, no doubt, is owing to the greater facility 



32 THE HOPE OF PEOGEESS. 

of access to the literature of our country, to that 
literature, in the words of Macaulay, " the bright- 
est, the purest, the most durable of all the glories 
of our country; to that Literature, so rich in precious 
truth and precious fiction ; to that Literature 
which boasts of the prince of all poets, and of the 
prince of all philosophers; to that Literature 
which has exercised an influence wider than that of 
our commerce, and mightier than that of our arms. ' ' 

Few of us make the most of our minds. The 
body ceases to grow in a few years; but the mind, 
if we will let it, may grow as long as life lasts. 

The onward progress of the future will not, we 
may be sure, be confined to mere material discov- 
eries. We feel that we are on the road to higher 
mental powers; that problems which now seem to 
us beyond the range of human thought will receive 
their solution, and open the way to still further ad- 
vance. Progress, moreover, we may hope, will be 
not merely material, not merely mental, but moral 
also. 

It is natural that we should feel a pride in the 
beauty of England, in the size of our cities, the 
magnitude of our commerce, the wealth of our 
country, the vastness of our Empire. But the 
true glory of a nation does not consist in the 
extent of its dominion, in the fertility of the soil, 
or the beauty of Nature, but rather in the moral 
and intellectual pre-eminence of the people. 

And yet how few of us, rich or poor, have made 
ourselves all we might be. If he does his best, as 



THE HOPE OF PROGRESS. 33 

Shakespeare says, " What a piece of work is man ! 
How noble in reason ! How infinite in faculty ! 
in form and movement, how express and admir- 
able ! " Few indeed, as yet, can be said to reach 
this high ideal. 

The Hindoos have a theory that after death ani- 
mals live again in a different form ; those that have 
done well in a higher, those that have done ill in 
a lower grade. To realize this is, they find, a 
powerful incentive to a virtuous life. But whether 
it be true of a future life or not, it is certainly true 
of our present existence. If we do our best for a 
day, the next morning we shall rise to a higher 
life; while if we give way to our passions and 
temptations, we take with equal certainty a step 
downward toward a lower nature. 

It is an interesting illustration of the Unity of 
Man, and an encouragement to those of us who 
have no claims to genius, that, though of course 
there have been exceptions, still on the whole, 
periods of progress have generally been those when 
a nation has worked and felt together ; the advance 
has been due not entirely to the efforts of a few 
great men, but also of a thousand little men ; not 
to a single genius, but to a national effort. 

Think, indeed, what might be. 

" Ah ! when shall all men's good 
Be each man's rule, and universal Peace 
Lie like a shaft of light across the land, 
And like a lane of beams athwart the sea, 
Thro' all the circle of the golden year." 



34 THE HOPE OF PROGRESS. 

Our life is surrounded with mystery, our very 
world is a speck in boundless space ; and not only 
the period of our own individual life, but that of 
the whole human race is, as it were, but a moment 
in the eternity of time. We cannot imagine any 
origin, nor foresee the conclusion. 

But though we may not as yet perceive any line 
of research which can give us a clue to the solution, 
in another sense we may hold that every addition 
to our knowledge is one small step toward the great 
revelation. 

Progress may be more slow, or more rapid. It 
may come to others and not to us. It will not 
come to us if we do not strive to deserve it. But 
come it surely will. 

" Yet one thing is there that ye shall not slay, 
Even thought, that fire nor iron can affright." 

The future of man is full of hope, and who can 
foresee the limits of his destiny? 



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